-e1416044240280.jpg "dixie carter")
The following is a complete recap of the second part of Steve Austin’s interview with TNA President Dixie Carter. You can check out the interview at this link, and the recap comes courtesy of Mark Adam Haggerty on Twitter @TapeTraderz and of DailyWrestlingNews.com:
Dixie is visiting Steve in Los Angeles, and the Texas Rattlesnake says that aside from the traffic, he loves the Southern California area. Particularly the weather. He asks Dixie if she could live in Los Angeles. She says that she loves it, and absolutely enjoys being there. She said it’s the sort of city that she could spend time in, versus New York, where she’s ready to leave after one or two days. Steve says that he owns a ranch in South Texas, and Dixie interrupted him to say, “Well I have one in North Texas.” They laugh and start talking about life growing up in the country.
Steve asks Dixie if she hunts, and she says that they do a lot of bird hunting on her ranch, primarily quails, and they also raise trophy deer. Dixie says that she owns one of the country’s premier breeding facilities. Austin asks Dixie how many acres she’s sitting on down in Texas, and she says that her father always told her not to answer questions like that. Steve seems a little annoyed, and says that his ranch is 2100 acres. Dixie says: “It’s bigger than that.” Dixie continues to say pretentious things, almost offhandedly. Steve says that he has a guy, Ted Fowler, who takes care of his ranch when he’s in Los Angeles. Dixie says that her family has an entire staff to do that, but stresses that while Steve’s ranch is his HOME, her family’s ranch is a place of business. Dixie jokes that if you have a less than 10,000 acres, “it’s just the place.”
The conversation transitions away from how rich Dixie Carter is and into professional wrestling once more. Steve asks Dixie to go into detail about why business didn’t work with Spike TV. Dixie says that she has a lot of respect for Spike TV, especially executives such as Kevin Kay and Scott Fishman. She says that their relationship was good and that TNA was the number one rated program on their network for a number of years, but Spike TV’s biggest problem was that they were always looking for “the next hit,” rather than focusing on the top rated show they already owned—TNA Impact. Dixie also said that being the number one program on any given network isn’t a guarantee, and felt that it was time to try something new. Dixie said that she spoke to the talent before she made the decision to move to Destination America. She said that everyone would rather be someplace where there would be more of an investment in their brand, versus what they were used to with Spike TV. Dixie says that Destination America is one of the top five fastest growing networks on television, and feels that if TNA can be a hit for them, then both companies will grow together. Dixie names a number of foreign markets that Destination America helped TNA reach, and stresses that there are more announcements to come in the very near future. Steve wants to know whether Destination America put any creative parameters on Dixie Carter and TNA before they signed them to a deal. Dixie says that they’ve been incredibly open to most creative decisions, and are well aware of what wrestling has the potential to do for their network. Dixie feels that TNA has “made more noise in the last four months” then they’ve made in a very long time.
Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
